Geass Eternal
by TimeTravelGuy
Summary: The Demon Emperor and his Knight of Zero made the greatest of sacrifices to atone for their sins. The collective human unconsciousness heard their plea to look to the future for the betterment of mankind...but sometimes creating a better future best begins in the past. So when their futures ended, their pasts began. Time Travel. Lelouch and Suzaku, but not a SuzaxLulu


Disclaimer: I don't own Code Geass, or any of the associated materials.

AN: I love time travel. I love Code Geass. This is the inevitable result of my love for time travel and Code Geass. Hope you all enjoy!

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**2018 a.t.b.**

He was going to die. He could hear Nunnally begin to weep. He could feel her hands trembling around his own. Thinks were darker, quieter. The crowds were cheering, weren't they? It was for the best. He would leave a world of peace behind. Nunnally's world, in Zero's capable hands. The thought brought a smile to his face, even as he began to fade.

In the days leading up to the Zero Requiem, he'd done an understandable bit of reflection. His relationships, his choices, his mistakes, his best and greatest moments…and in that time, he'd finally confronted the demons that he'd managed to elude for so long. It was for the best, of course. He might never have been able to go through with his final plan if he couldn't make peace with himself, and confronting his most horrible sins was a vital aspect of that self-discovery.

Perhaps the most striking realization was that he could no longer bring himself to hate Suzaku Kururugi. Not ever again. Once upon a time, Suzaku had been his closest friend. His only friend, really. For all of his bratty moments in childhood, Suzaku had been a good person at the core. It was easy to see how he and Euphemia could have fallen in love. Suzaku's personality was almost a perfect reflection of her own. He had the same sense of justice. He understood that violence was sometimes unavoidable, but abhorred its use, and always sought a peaceful resolution when it was possible, just as she did. He was kind, gentle, and naïve, sometimes almost painfully so. They were perfect for one another.

The most painful similarity between the two, however, was that Suzaku had also died by his hand, with a single act of carelessness. The day that Euphemia died was unquestionably the most horrible moment in his life. Everything over the following year had been an almost direct result of that single event. He lost the Black Knights. He pushed Kallen and Nunnally so far away that they'd never truly come close again. He opened the door for Shirley's murder, and led Rolo into his horribly misguided sacrifice. Worst of all, with a single thoughtless statement and a squeeze of the trigger, he'd murdered both the only sister that he truly felt for aside from Nunnally and the only true brother he'd ever known.

Oh, certainly Suzaku had physically survived the encounter. Lelouch would even argue that he'd thrived in that regard, pushed himself to the absolute peak of his physical and mental capabilities. Yet the innocent and loving child he'd once known was destroyed, and in its place a monster was born. From the very beginning, he'd been intent on forcing Suzaku to open his eyes and see the world as it was. He never could have imagined what would happen when Suzaku finally did exactly that.

For a long time, Lelouch hated him. Hated the monster that he'd created through his countless schemes and manipulations. In his final days, however, it all became clear. He never truly hated Suzaku Kururugi. He didn't blame Suzaku for sacrificing him to the emperor. Lelouch himself had repeatedly sacrificed enemies and allies alike to achieve his goals, and had their positions been reversed, he'd have likely done the same thing. He didn't blame Suzaku for the FLEIJA. It was, after all, a direct result of the irresistible command of Geass that Lelouch himself had forced on the man. He could justify almost every action that Suzaku had taken, and those few he couldn't justify were probably because he lacked the necessary information, rather than because there was none.

The problem was that everything he could hate about Suzaku was something he found in himself. The ends justified the means. It was okay to manipulate others to your own ends as long as you achieved your goals. Seeing his oldest friend lie, and deceive, and betray his way into power…it didn't take long to realize that it was far more difficult to justify one's own actions when experiencing them from the other side. In truth, Lelouch had opened his own eyes just as surely as he'd opened Suzaku's. _That_ was what he truly hated. Because whenever they came face to face, he had no choice but to see what he'd become, and justifying his own actions meant justifying Suzaku's as well. He had no one else to blame, and no way to justify himself, and he smothered that realization with anger and hatred.

Yet in the end, Suzaku had ultimately been the better man. Sacrificing himself to create a better world was no easy choice, no matter how prepared he was, but Suzaku had sacrificed just as much, if not even more. Suzaku abandoned his identity for the rest of his life, and at the same time he'd done something that Lelouch wasn't entirely certain he could have done if they'd traded places: Forgiven. He couldn't say for certain how he knew, but he was knew it was true. Even after all of the violence, and the hatred, and the betrayal, and all of the pain they'd caused one another, in those final moments, Suzaku Kururugi didn't see Lelouch vi Britannia, 99th Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire. He didn't see Zero, the mass murderer, terrorist, and revolutionary. Not even Lelouch Lamperouge, the disinterested and cocky schoolboy who couldn't be bothered to care about anything.

Somehow, as the blade pierced his chest, he could feel that his oldest friend saw only Lelouch, the young (if somewhat bossy and prissy) boy from a foreign land that became his brother in all but blood, and whose sister had joined in worming their way into his heart with no intention of leaving.

He just…wished it could have been different. Not for his sake. His actions had been monstrous, no matter his intent. His death was necessary and just. No, he wished it could have been different for Suzaku's sake. His oldest friend. His most trusted comrade. The brother who would never leave him. He didn't deserve to die as nothing, leaving only a faceless ideal and an empty grave behind.

He just wished…

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**2108 a.t.b.**

He was going to die. It was only through the miracle of modern medical science, the nature of Geass, and his own stubborn determination to live up the final promise he gave Lelouch that he'd managed to stave it off this long. He was a long-lived man, but a man all the same, and even Lelouch's Geass couldn't force his body to function when it simply didn't have anything else to give.

At least he left a world of peace. Lelouch's world. Certainly, the world had seen conflicts even after the Demon Emperor's assassination at the hands of the legendary "hero" of the Great War, but nothing that couldn't be handled through the power of the United Federation of Nations. He wasn't as charismatic as Lelouch, and he doubted _anyone_ was as intelligent, but he had the former leadership of the Black Knights. Luckily, they always seemed to know exactly what he needed to complete the illusion, and were willing to help him keep it. No one ever said it — they would all take his secret final wish to the grave — but there was little doubt that they'd realized who the new "Zero" was long ago.

Most of them were gone now. The few that weren't, well, he couldn't blame them for staying away. He'd made certain to keep his condition under the radar, and even if he hadn't, most of the old crew probably didn't even know where he was anymore. It had been years since Zero was truly necessary, and so he'd gradually faded from public view, starting anew as an unknown drifter. Dying alone…was probably for the best. Lelouch had died alone, comforted solely by the knowledge that Nunnally knew he wasn't the monster he'd seemed. He'd sworn to Lelouch on that day that he would only be Zero, for eternity. Suzaku Kururugi was dead, and Zero was an ideal that couldn't die. This was the only way to keep his promise. He would die as no one and nothing, in atonement, just as Lelouch atoned through accepting the world's hatred.

He just…wished it could have been different. He could live with what he'd done. Ninety years of reflection had been good for him. No, he wished it could have been different for Lelouch's sake. After all of the sorrow and the pain had passed, all that remained was the love he had for his first real friend, his _brother_. His actions may have been cruel, but at heart he'd been the same innocent boy who just wanted to protect his baby sister. He didn't deserve to spend the rest of eternity as a monster.

He just wished…

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AN: Well, there goes the first chapter. Hope you enjoyed, and I always love to hear opinions on the story.


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